Akiko and the Great Wall of Trudd Read Online Free Page A

the wall was covered with a damp, greenish yellow moss, and every time I thought I had a solid footing my shoes would suddenly slide off to one side, leaving me clinging by my fingertips.

    Spuckler definitely could have climbed a lot faster if he hadn’t been tied to me and Mr. Beeba. As it was, he forced himself to go very slowly. He also called down little warnings to us as we went along, like “It gets a little steep up here, ’Kiko!” and “Watch out for the loose rocks over here on the right, Beebs.”
    The higher we went, the stronger the wind became. Every once in a while a powerful gust would whistle past and I’d find myself digging my fingernails into the wall with all my might. My skin was becoming all goose-pimply and I started to get a weird, queasy feeling in my stomach.
    “Come on now,” I said to myself. “You can
do
this. Don’t be a baby.”

I tried not to look down, but I couldn’t help myself. I really wanted to see how high up we were. Once I snuck a quick glance down and was amazed to see how far away the ground looked. I could see the doorway with all the rocks piled in front of it, but now it looked really tiny, like the entrance to a toy castle.
    It reminded me of the time my parents took me to the top of this supertall building in Chicago where I could look out the windows and see all the tiny little people and taxicabs and stuff hundreds and hundreds of feet below me. Only now I didn’t have a big, thick piece of glass to look through.
    When we reached a spot seventy or eighty feet from the ground, Spuckler practically
ordered
me to stop looking down.
    “I’m tellin’ ya, ’Kiko: Ya gotta keep your eyes on the wall in front of ya,” he said in a very stern voice. “It’s the only way t’ keep yourself from gettin’ dizzy.”
    “Indeed,” Mr. Beeba added, for once agreeing with Spuckler, “if you keep looking down you’re going to get a nasty case of vertigo. Trust me, Akiko. I’m highly susceptible to dizzy spells myself!”
    I knew they were right. I promised myself to stay focused on the climbing.
    By this time we were nearly a hundred feet up in the air. Sweat was dripping down my forehead and getting in my eyes. I probably should have asked Spuckler and Mr. Beeba to stop so that I could take a rest, but I didn’t want them to think I was some kind of weakling or something. So I just kept going, reaching up to one stone and then another, pulling myself up again and again until my whole body ached.
    A minute or two later I accidentally cut my arm on a sharp piece of rock sticking out from the wall.
    “Oww!”
    It was a pretty bad cut. I stared with surprise as bright red blood began to run down my forearm.
    “You okay, ’Kiko?” Spuckler asked, turning his face toward me to see what had happened. For some reason I turned my arm away so that he wouldn’t be able to see the blood. I guess I just didn’t want him to worry about me too much.
    “Are you hurt?” Mr. Beeba asked, looking up from where he was a few feet below me.
    “Don’t worry, guys,” I replied, trying my best to sound casual and unconcerned. “I just scraped myself a little. It’s nothing.” There was a weird little quiver in my voice, though, and suddenly my head felt . . . I don’t know,
cloudy
or something.
    I looked up and was relieved to see the top of the wall coming into view. I could even hear the flags up there, flapping like crazy in the wind.
    “See, ’Kiko?” Spuckler called down to me. “Just another fifty feet to go. Sixty, tops.”
    “Sixty, tops . . . ,” I repeated, surprised by the faraway sound of my own voice.
    Now I really
was
feeling dizzy. I looked over and saw Poog at my side. He was hovering just a foot or two from my head with a very concerned look on his face. I had to blink over and over to keep him in focus.
    “Akiko!” I heard Mr. Beeba say from a few feet below me. It sounded as if he were miles away. “A a a r e   y o o o u